All the enrichment assays showed pH values near 4.5 after 48 h
incubation. Colonies (n ¼ 350) were isolated from the different raw
material described in section 2.1. Most of the isolates were shown to
be cocci with different appearance (diplococci, chains, and tetramers).
From these microscopic observations and macroscopic
evaluations of colonies, 50 strains (41 cocci and 9 bacilli) were
selected based on the fact that they had different morphologies and
possessed gram positive and catalase-negative phenotypes. These
50 strains were the identified by genotypic analysis (see Table 1)
and different technological properties were studied in order to
select the most promising starter cultures.